TRAINING Youth racing
Charles and his daughter pow- erboating after completing their qualification together.
WHERE IN THE WORLD?
Share your stories and memories of the area to the.editor @
rya.org.uk
Don’t dismiss paper charts As a sailor I’ve been following, with interest and concern, the debate on the UK Hydrographic Office’s plan to cease production of paper charts. While I admit chart plotters are
an excellent piece of technology, they do have limitations. For most small boat users,
the restrictive size of the screen, about that of a paperback book, means it’s not possible to get a good impression of the area being navigated. The screen will either be ‘zoomed in’, resulting in only close features being visible, or ‘zoomed out’, in which case detail will be sparse. Most small boats will only carry
one chart plotter, so that a failure in the software or power will mean a loss of charts. Those lucky enough to have multiple plotters will probably have them connected to the same power source, so a loss of power has the same effect. Finally, good passage planning is difficult
without being able to see the whole of the planned journey. The recent case of the cruise ship
MS Maud, which lost all its bridge navigation systems when hit by a rogue wave, should be a warning too. When I visited the bridge during a recent cruise the captain told us that they no longer used paper charts but had duplicate electronic systems. Unfortunately for MS Maud, all these systems lost
their battle against the North Sea flooding the bridge. Perhaps the Hydrographic Office
should consider a print-on-request facility, similar to that used by the Ordnance Survey. Whilst we’ll move to some form of
chart plotter on our boat, we’ll also continue to keep and use our old paper charts until either they, or we, fall apart.
Jerry Armitage
High pressure over the area allows sea level to fall.
Correction : In the RYA Magazine Winter issue article ‘Understanding
eNavigation’, the illustration annotation on page 23 should have read ‘High pressure over the area allows sea level to fall’, not rise.
rya.org.uk SPRING 2024 65
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